Fascinating woman and a wonderful writer. It seems a bit backwards to read her autobiography when I haven't ever read any of the mysteries for which she is famous, but I can't regret my decision to read this at all. I just wish I could meet this amazing woman!

I seldom read autobiography but loved this; P D James had such a distinctive, elegant voice that, as a huge fan of her novels, I found it a genuine pleasure to spend time in her company. It gave interesting insight into the life of a successful author and also some thoughts on the art of writing. The essay on Jane Austen's "Emma", included as an Appendix, was an unexpected bonus.

Really boring.

P. D. James is one of the most literate of crime writers, so it was surprising to read that she had never gone to university. She was from a middle class (lower middle?) family. Once her husband developed mental illness, she realized she would have to support her family. Already working as a clerk in the NHS, she went to night school for a diploma in hospital administration. They had two daughters and lived with her in-laws, who provided childcare. Her husband died at age 44. She retired from the Home Office in 1979 at age 59, able to do so from the success of her novel Innocent Blood.

This book is written in diary format and covers the year 1997-98. Much of it describes activities of dining with various friends and going on book tours, but there's also a lot of filling in her life story, and musing about books, publishing, society, morals, etc.

p. 26:t"I saw great poverty when I was a young child….A few of the children I went to school with were almost in rags. I can remember clearly one small boy…with the pinched face of an adult…Little else but the child’s face was washed, and he came to school ill-shod and, I suspect, hungry. At one lesson he was severely caned (the use of the cane, brought, sharply across the palm of the hand, was fairly common) and howled with pain and perhaps a less focused misery. For the remainder of the lesson the male teacher was particularly kind to him, colluding with him in small jokes against the rest of us. Even as an eight-year-old I knew that this was because he was ashamed of his severity."

p. 39:t"Leonard Woolf describes how, after he and Virginia Stephen were married in 1912, Virginia acted for a short time as secretary for Roger Fry’s second post-impressionist exhibition at the Grafton Galleries, and Henry James came to tea, which was served in the basement. As he talked he tilted back his chair till it was balanced on the two back legs and maintained this equilibrium by holding on to the edge of the table. Henry James did this whenever he came to tea with the Stephen family and as his long sentences untwined themselves the chair would slowly tilt backwards and the children’s eyes would be fixed on it, hoping that it would finally overbalance and deposit James on the floor. Time after time he managed to recover himself, but indeed one day it did happen. The chair went over and the novelist, undismayed, was flung on the floor. He was unhurt and, after a moment, completed his characteristically ceremonious and flowery sentence."

p. 54:t"After we moved from Ludlow to Cambridge, we ate as a family only occasionally on Sunday. We three children and my mother ate in the kitchen and my father had his lunch and dinner brought to him on a tray in the dining room. I can remember Mother placing it down before him with an expression compounded of resentment and slight apprehension….I now realize that, like me, he needed at least one period of absolute solitude during the day and perhaps this was his way of ensuring that he got it."

p. 101:t[as a member of the Booker Management Committee] "…I have made a start with the winner, Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things, but haven’t got very far. It seems to me somewhat lush and overwritten, a beginner’s attempt at a Naipaul or a Rushdie. But I admit to prejudice: I seldom enjoy books seen through the eyes of children, The Go-Between being a notable exception."

p. 117:t"Gustave Flaubert wrote that there was nothing true in Madame Bovary. “It is a story of pure invention. I have put none of my own feelings into it, nor anything of my own life. The illusion, on the contrary (if there is any), comes from the very objectivity of the work.”"

p. 153:t"I have always felt great sympathy for Ted Hughes and huge respect for the dignified silence with which he has endured years of calumny. No woman who is the mother of young children and kills herself can be sane, and this degree of mental pain has its roots far deeper than the imperfections of a marriage. Equally no one who has never had to live with a partner who is mentally ill can possibly understand what this means. Two people are in separate hells, but each intensifies the other. Those who have not experienced this contaminating misery should keep silent."


Vocabulary, new or forgotten:

"In youth we go forward caparisoned in immortality;" - caparison is richly ornamented clothing; finery.

"spend a weekend at their oasthouse in Kent" - oast is a kiln for drying hops or malt or for drying and curing tobacco.

"the elegant hieratic stillness" - of or associated with sacred persons or offices; sacerdotal.

I just finished the book last night. It is a diary kept for one year by the detective writer, P. D. James. Her purpose for writing it was to not only chronicle the 77th year of her life but to use it as a vehicle to fill in details of her life as a child, young adult newly married, young mother during WWII, and now well regarded writer.

She gives speeches, receives awards, visits friends, attends church, paricipates in the House of Lords, and remarks on the events of the day such as the death Princess Diana, meeting Tony Blair (she wasn't impressed), and other less noteworthy events.

One of the most fascinating remembrances is when she tells of living in London with a newborn daughter while the V1 and V2 rockets rained down during WWII.

The book is very good about a decent lady who certainly had her share of trials in life but has come through with a sense of humor, humility, and great capacity for friendship.

This is a yearly read for me. I enjoy James's fiction work, but also enjoy this year-long record of her life. It's fascinating to see how life influences the art of an artist. This will be my third reading of the book and I already see things I missed before.

P D James was just a good writer! She follows Alexander Pope’s advice that “seventy-seven is a time to be in earnest,” so she wrote a diary/journal of her life during her 77th year. And it’s delightful. In all but a few entries, something she’s experiencing that day connects to some memory of her life. Also she moved in amazing literary circles; I found out about several writers of the 20th century I want to read.
This book is worth your time.

It took me a long time to read this book, but that is mainly because it sent me off on so many wonderful tangents. Great fun! What an amazing person! She really had her plate full. I loved hearing about her growing up and her favorite authors. I learned of Tragedy at Law from this book and really enjoyed it. She really pegged it on her description of the perfect reading spot. So much to treasure here. I read it as part of my resolution to read and discard this year, but I may not be able to discard this one.

"In 1997, P.D. James, the much loved and internationally acclaimed author of mysteries, turned seventy-seven. Taking to heart Dr. Johnson's advice that at seventy-seven it is 'time to be in earnest,' she decided to undertake a book unlike any she had written before: a personal memoir in the form of a diary. This enchanting and highly original volume is the result. Structured as the diary of a single year, it roams back and forth through time, illuminating James's extraordinary, sometimes painful and sometimes joyful life.

"Here, interwoven with reflections on her writing career and the craft of crime novels, are vivid accounts of episodes in her own past -- of school days in 1920s and 1930s Cambridge . . . of the war and the tragedy of her husband's madness . . . of her determined struggle to support a family alone. She tells about the birth of her second daughter in the midst of a German buzz-bomb attack; about becoming a civil servant (and laying the groundwork for her writing career by working in the criminal justice system); about her years of public service on such bodies as the Arts Council and the BBC's Board of Governors, culminating in entry to the House of Lords. Along the way, with warmth and authority, she offers views on everything from author tours to the problems of television adaptations, from books reviewing to her obsession with Jane Austen.

"Written with exceptional grace, this 'fragment of autobiography' has already been received with enthusiasm by British reviewers and readers. The thousands of Americans who have enjoyed P.D. Jame's novels will be equally charmed. diary or memoir or both, Time to Be in Earnest is a delight."
~~front flap

This is indeed a delightful book, but it's not a diary. Well, it is in the sense of recording what she did on any particular day (definition: a book in which one keeps a daily record of events and experiences). But in the more accepted sense: "especially : a daily record of personal activities, reflections, or feelings," it's more of a journal, somewhat interspersed with autobiography. It's more of a recounting what she did on any particular day -- what book signing, what talk she gave, which party she attended, which meeting she participated in. Most of those events were recorded without much personal reaction to them, which I found disappointing. She was a bit more forthcoming when she talked about meeting friends and family, and what they did.

But on the whole, I got the sense of a very private person, one who resisted having her feelings held up for all to see. Which of course is a very British attitude, unlike us Yanks who glory in the "tell all" book, with any and all laundry -- dirty or not -- held up for the world to see.

Be that as it may, what she did was interesting -- her schedule would daunt many a younger person! Daily events -- meetings, signings, lectures, etc. And her side excursions into her own opinion about the verdicts in old murder cases, the current political state of Britain, modern education as opposed to education in her younger years -- all those gave a picture of a very conservative dowager in many ways, but also of a very modern thinker in other ways. A complex person, and a very intriguing one at that!

I love P.D. James, her mysteries, that is. Unfortunately, as much as I love her work, the fact is that autobiographical diaries require something interesting to happen, profound insights or a unique historical perspective in order to remain interesting. None of those happened here.

Such a great read! Her love of the english contry confirms the beauty described in her books.

I really enjoyed reading about her childhood, education, and family. I was very interested in her thoughts on writing and her genre. 4 stars for that. I got tired of the political talk and I found the mundane diary details (how her cat acts when she comes home from being gone a few days) rather boring. 2 stars for those sections.